28 July 2003
The first Test I went to was the one between these two sides at Edgbaston five years ago. I remember Pollock and Donald opening the bowling, charging in and bowling at around ninety miles per hour apiece. Atherton gritted out a hundred; Butcher made it to seventy-odd before being caught after lunch (I forget by whom); then came Stewart. I thought all Test cricket was like this until the next year, when I saw New Zealand and England each go through the entire batting order in one day.
(Incidentally, I was part of this: ‘…a crowd liberally sprinkled with schoolchildren.’ )
That’s not really relevant, it’s just an anecdote. Anecdotes litter cricket commentary, so I don’t feel bad about putting it here.
Anyway, the Test. Graeme Smith’s a captain who’s been criticised in South Africa for being too inexperienced, too much of a political decision designed to sever ties with Hanse Cronje. Damned if he didn’t go and hit a South African record 277 in the first innings as they hit a colossal 595-4 (declared), at the tender cricketing age of 22. And in the second innings, which they were forced to play, he hit a blazing 85 off just 70 balls while at the other end his team-mates were finding it hard to buy a run.
Michael Vaughan continues to be the only England batsman capable of consistently hitting big against world-class bowling attacks. In the winter it was Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne; this week it was Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini. Pollock in particular gave a master class of ball control to frustrate England’s openers, already under pressure thanks to Smith and Gibbs. His pace has been reduced, but he’s got bucketloads of experience and know-how. Through this Vaughan hit an aggressive but composed 150, but was again out before reaching 200.
So as he’s so good, we have to pile the pressure on him. As Nasser Hussain resigned today, he’s both the one-day captain and the Test captain, as well as being our best batsman. I wish him luck, because when England won four series in a row under Hussain, the captain himself had a high score of 25. After a couple of years he found some way of balancing the two, but he could still never win the toss.
After Vaughan’s dismissal things could have gone badly wrong for England. The middle-order was gone and McGrath and Stewart, supposedly the two batsmen to steady things before Freddie Flintoff leads the tail in, got out in the thirties. Flintoff himself hit a quick 40 before being caught LBW by Pretorius on the last ball of the penultimate day. So at the start of today we were in no small amount of trouble, with only bowlers left and 21 required to avoid the follow-on and all but force the draw.
Enter Ashley Giles. Despite being criticised in the one-day series, I still rate him highly — and not just because he’s a Warwickshire player. He’s usually a decent containing spinner, the best we have, and he can bat a bit too. Left high and dry on a painstaking 8 at the close, he came out Monday morning and blasted his way to a 41 that saved the match for England. This was all the more impressive when you consider the support he was offered — Gough’s single being the only run the last three batsmen managed between them.
In addition to this, Giles took four of the nine wickets the team got, although admittedly at a cost of 200 of the 600+ runs they scored. And that’s the problem. Yes, there were rain delays, but we only took nine wickets in the match. It’s impossible to win a Test if you don’t get the other side out twice, which means wickets, and twenty of them. We never looked capable of that in this match, and that’s a worry.